And off we went to the Sahara the next morning. We’d hired a guide and a 4×4 for 4 days, along with two Aussies and an Italian couple. Those were the best days of the trip so far.

The first day’s drive seemed like it would never end, 8 hours of dusty road in hot, unbelievably dry weather, where all we could see all around were endless rocky plains. Basically, the moonscape by daylight. Very hard on the system, I have to say.

In the desert it’s not the heat so much as the lack of humidity that gets you. You are constantly aware of the water you are losing, as your mouth dries each time you breathe. You’re hot but never sweaty, as everything evaporates instantly. You rub your fingers together and they feel strange, for the oil that is normally on your skin is gone. After four days without a shower, my hair was not greasy, but felt like dry hay.

We finally got to our destination, the tiny nowhere village of Zagora, and three Berber nomads were waiting to take us into the desert on camelback to sleep in their camp. We said goodbye to our guide and after an hour and a half of camel riding, it was pitch dark and we finally got to their big, sturdy tent. They threw cushions around a low makeshift table, and the six Westerners feel asleep immediately. When they woke us with dinner (one big bowl of stew, six forks, and mint tea), the moon had risen and they had lit a lantern. The desert was the most perfect silence I had ever heard; it was a perfect feeling of peace, happiness and good will.

The nomads told us that their families sent one son each, six months out of the year to work wih tourists, but that they much preferred their true nomadic life. They’d never been to a city and didn’t wish to. Cars scared them; one recounted that when he went to the tiny town of Ouarzazate, he didn’t know how to cross the street. He had no wish to see Marrakesh.

The next night we stayed with a Berber woman and her seven dirty and beautiful children. That desert was one made of endless sandy orange dunes, the kind of desert immortalized in so many pictures and movies. But that’s another story for another time.